Fate Revelation Online: Mind Games
by Hardcore Heathen
Summary: A side story to Fate: Revelation Online, by daniel gudman. Faced with the reality of a Death Game, what would you do? Would you flee the thought of death like a coward? It is a doomed effort, for even cowards cannot escape the truth: to be a magus is to walk with death. Avoiding all the monsters in the game simply leaves one with more time to walk that razor's edge.
1. Chapter 1

**Fate Revelation Online: Mind Games**

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any portion of the Type Moon or SAO universes, and though I'm working in the Fate/Revelation Online universe with the blessings of daniel, I did not conceive of it and give full credit for the crossover to him.

**Author's Notes:** This fic is an outgrowth of the "You're Trapped in FRO!" thread in the Ideas forum. I started getting ideas, and I talked them over with daniel and got his seal of approval for this fic. The main character is, well, me. The characterization of myself is as accurate as I can make it, though certain events have been altered to assist in maintaining anonymity. Any names of "real" people (myself included) have been changed for similar reasons.

I finally changed the title. Hated the old one.

**Chapter Quote:** _To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice._ \- Confucius

**Chapter One: Trapped in FRO!**

**Death Game: Day 0**

Yamaguchi hadn't changed a whole lot in the past decade. Clean streets, young people on bicycles, public trains everywhere, roads designed for pedestrian traffic, little locally owned shops dominating the area - this would always be my personal image of Japan. Sure, Tokyo was hypermodern, and Kyoto had the traditional architecture, but Yamaguchi had a quaint, home-like air to it that appealed to me.

The study abroad trip that first brought me to Yamaguchi had been just over five years ago. I'd only kept in touch with a handful of people, and most of those had moved on with their lives to bigger cities and better opportunities than Yamaguchi could provide. I would meet up with some of them during my two week stay in Japan, but mostly I just wanted...to get away, and have a vacation. I hadn't even been sure I wanted to come here, but Yamaguchi Prefectural University had offered to let me stay in their guest housing, free of charge for the duration of my stay, as long as I did a handful of guest lectures at some English and cultural classes. It probably wasn't all that common that an Army officer with ties to YPU came into town. I was only Reserve, and had no combat experience, but they didn't really seem to care - they loved getting "unique" perspectives from foreigners for their cultural classes.

My first lecture was scheduled for a Global Culture class tomorrow afternoon. That meant I'd be in uniform - ACUs instead of the dress uniform; I hated wearing the dress blues. I should probably have been going over my PowerPoint, or rehearsing my presentation, or getting some last-minute Japanese studying in. In theory, all of the students in the class spoke English. I had been assured of this.

I knew better.

And I _should_ have been doing all of those things, but instead I was wearing an oversized plastic helmet and touching my toes like an 80 year old grandma "working out." For a technological marvel, the setup process for the NerveGear could best be described as "silly." It didn't help that the instruction booklet was in Japanese and so was the NerveGear interface. There had to be a way to set it to English, but I didn't feel like finding it and rationalized the inconvenience away as being "good practice." Besides, this was the promise games had given me since I was a kid! Technology had finally gotten to the point where total immersion became possible, and the first _real_ game for this groundbreaking bit of technology, Sword Art Online, was solely focused on beating the crap out of things with sharp objects. SAO's lack of magic sounded weird, but I'd had plenty of fun playing Chivalry and other, simpler medieval type combat games.

Even without magic, an MMO staple, the hype for Sword Art Online had gone completely nuts in the past couple of months. I hadn't even had to hear about how amazing SAO was supposed to be from a gaming site; CNN wouldn't shut up about it. The US release had been delayed because Congress had conjured walls of red tape in the name of "protecting citizens from potentially dangerous or addictive new technology." The Virtual Boy had been held up as an example of what an untested product could do to children, and if _that_ wasn't a hilarious commentary on how up-to-date Congress was with technology...

I shook my head and tried to focus on the moment. Probably best to not badmouth the government; that sort of thing tended to get people like me in trouble.

I felt kind of guilty as I finished the set-up procedures for the NerveGear - I should be going out and having fun with people I haven't seen in years, and playing video games inside an apartment instead of doing that...well, it seemed all too familiar. I kind of wasted my first trip to Japan playing Counterstrike and reading One Piece instead of sightseeing and socializing. _'But hey,'_ I rationalized. _'It's a weeknight, and I can fiddle with this for a couple hours. It'll make for some cool Facebook posts, and there's gotta be a way to get some screencaps or something, right? Besides, I can rub it in my friends' faces that I can play and they can't - the US release isn't scheduled for months.'_

I still had time to back out, and do something productive with my evening. Hell, I could scalp my copy of the game online for five times what I'd paid - everybody wanted the game, and not everybody had been lucky enough to place an order in the _five-second_ online window before the entire first run had sold out. Hopefully America would have a bigger product run, or we'd have Black Friday-style pseudo-riots. The smart thing would be 100% digital distribution, but publishers have a love affair with brick and mortar stores.

Ah, hell. Time to stop stalling.

I checked the power supply, then laid back on the traditional Japanese bed. Just as uncomfortable as I remembered. I shifted for a minute, trying to get used to the way I could feel the tatami floor mat through the thin mattress. My feet stuck out past the bottom of the bed by several inches - Japan was not designed with people my height in mind.

I settled into an awkward sort of fetal position and tried to ignore the mild discomfort. Soldiers, even medical officers ones who never left the hospital, were supposed to be tough.

My back twinged and I shifted again. Being tough was not something I was necessarily good at.

I reached for the power button for the NerveGear. Virtual Reality would do a good job of blocking the aches, and I was going to wake up sore no matter what I did. I tapped the button, and the world fell away in a zooming tunnel of light.

A pop-up box appeared, with a bunch of text, a Japanese flag, and two options for "Confirm" and "Cancel." Oh god, was this the EULA and Terms of Agreement? I had _no_ interest in reading that wall of text...except wait a minute, there was a drop-down box next to the flag. I tapped it, and a list of other flags appeared, with text in different languages next to each. So this was the Language Select option? I paused for a minute.

Reading the instructions manual and doing the setup had reminded me just how sketchy my Japanese was. The last time I'd been here, I'd gotten pretty good at the language by reading Shonen manga in Japanese. (I'd mostly read Naruto, which meant I had a tendency to talk like a bratty ten year old.) I grimaced and left the option on Japanese. It would up the learning curve, but I needed the practice. And besides, what learning curve could possibly be worse than Dark Souls?

I tapped through the rest of the menus that popped up, hitting "Accept" for everything. I may have wanted to learn more "proper" Japanese, but I still had no interest in reading the damned licenses.

It only took me a minute to get to the character creation screen. Everything seemed pretty standard, though there were more customization variables than I was used to. I thought for a minute, then spent a few minutes making myself into as blatant a copy of Link as possible - the end result would probably generate copyright violation lawsuits if it ended up in a promotional image.

Now for the tough part - name creation.

Which, for some reason, was using the Roman alphabet. Huh. That was...weird, but it did make name selection a lot easier.

I typed in my standard RPG character name...and then blinked in surprise. _What?_ Who the hell would take Kelnath? There had only been like 20 instances of that name in WoW, and WoW had had more players by 3 orders of magnitude. I grimaced at my bad luck and spent a few minutes thinking.

Finally, I sighed in defeat. If the name was taken; the name was taken.

I frowned and spent several minutes scratching at my chin as I looked at the blank name box. One definite downside to this whole VR thing was the lack of ability to browse the internet for information while hooked up. I was sure there were any number of names I could steal from books and movies, but it was harder to just think of them in a vacuum.

What the hell. On a whim, I typed in a shorter version of my non-RPG tag: Heathen. A lot of RPGs would kick back common nouns with negative religious connotations, so I was already thinking of something else -

"Squiggle squig kanji kanji desu!"

Well, I assumed it said something about my name being accepted, but that was all I got out of it.

The screen flashed, and I reflexively closed my eyes against the light. When the light faded, I opened my eyes to the world of Aincrad.

I would have whistled at the graphics, except I never learned how to whistle. I settled for a long exhalation, eyes wide. I felt the wind of my breath brush against my lips and the pressure difference as my chest contracted. I flexed my shoulders and felt my shirt shift into a more comfortable position.

If it weren't for the HUD, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real life and this...fantasy.

I looked around myself slowly, taking in the medieval fantasy-style architecture. I saw clean stone walls made of perfectly equal-sized blocks, a cobblestone road, and decorative planters with exotic-looking fronds lining the road. To my left, I could hear voices in the distance. I turned to face it, and my simulated inner ear corrected for my changing direction perfectly - the sound was now coming from in front of me.

A minute's walk brought me to a market, bustling with activity. I stood for a full minute, simply trying to make sense of the chaos. Players were shouting at each other from across the market in good cheer, bragging about quests they'd finished or cool drops they'd gotten. Merchants hawked their wares, and at first I didn't realize that they were fully voice-acted NPCs responding dynamically to whatever Players were saying.

AI that could respond to _language_, not just predetermined phrases? Kayaba...as awe-inspiring as this game was, he had wasted his talent on it.

I spent the next three hours exploring the town in a moderate daze, completely forgetting about the namesake gameplay aspect of Sword Art Online. I had a tiny amount of starting gold - Col, whatever - and immediately set out to spend it. I saw a charming place at a corner street, with a wooden sign that depicted a steaming cup and some kanji next to it. A...coffee shop? I didn't recognize the kanji, but it seemed like a good guess. I walked through the front door (yep, coffee shop), then paused in hesitation - did I sit down, or order first?

"Would you like something to drink, sir?" a waitress asked me. I blinked, and looked down at the woman - she was barely half my height. Maybe I'd overdone it with the height stat.

"Ah...yes?" I responded smartly.

The waitress - an NPC, I realized - said, "We have ******, &amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;, ^^^^^^" she continued for a bit, then waited patiently for my response. I hadn't understood any of that.

"Um, I'll have…****&amp;?" I had probably butchered the pronunciation.

The NPC held her pose for a second longer than felt natural, then responded, "Your drink will be ready _. Please, _ _ any table you like."

...okay maybe that Japanese language option wasn't the best idea, but dammit I would _learn_ this way! And it wasn't impossible to figure out by context. I was also oddly reassured by the display of a small Uncanny Valley from the waitress - it helped to remind me that she was just an NPC.

I took a seat at a table in the corner, and studied the design of the shop while I waited. I wasn't sure what the design focus was supposed to be - it felt vaguely European medieval, but with clear Asian elements - and didn't manage to figure out the theme by the time the waitress returned with my drink. While I was seated, our heads were about even, and I got a good look at her for the first time.

She was cute in a traditional Japanese way, with short-cut black hair and a soft expression. The cut of her outfit was demure and not eye-catching, which suited a background character. She set my drink on the table, bowed, and went back to waiting behind the counter - an idle animation?

My drink was an interesting shade of purple. I raised an eyebrow at this and gave it a long, hard look. Eh, what the hell, it was just a game. If I'd found a Poisonous Coffee Shop easter egg this early on, I'd be more amused than anything else. I took a careful sip.

The flavor was...unusual. It was like Vanilla Cherry Coke with a hint of something I'd never had before. Before I could place the flavor, my drink was empty. I looked down at the empty cup accusingly, but ordered a "^^^^^^" next.

With more focus on identifying drinks than preserving gold, I ended up penniless inside of an hour. I looked down at the menu sadly, resolving to come back and finish sampling once I had some money. Besides, this would give me an excuse to go out and actually play with the sword part of Sword Art Online.

"Did you want anything else, sir?" the NPC waitress asked me.

"Huh?" I answered intelligently. "Oh, uh...I...no money have." Thank god she was an NPC. I didn't want to have to see what real people would think of my spoken Japanese.

The waitress looked left, then right, almost furtively, before turning back to me. She winked. "You were a good customer. If you help me with something, you can drink here without money." Her vocabulary had slipped into a more "childish" sort without any uncommon words.

I reeled back a bit in my seat. Dynamic quest generation _and_ an ability to pick from dialogue options based on a perceived ability of the Player? Too good to be true, but there it was.

I spent the next two hours running errands for the woman (who I learned was the owner, not just a waitress), and was rewarded with infinite free (non-alcoholic) beverages at Mika's Tavern.

It was probably getting pretty late, and I very much liked my sleep. I sat in one of the chairs in the tavern, sipping on some sort of carbonated fruit juice mix, and began tapping through the menu. Logout, logout, wherefore art thou…

Ten minutes of searching failed to bring me the elusive button. None of the typical text commands (/camp, /logout, /quit, /exit, etc) worked either. I couldn't reach up and pull the NerveGear off of my head, because the device inhibited all of my motor functions for safety reasons. I snorted in amusement and tried to bury my irritation. There was certainly a culture in MMOs for "gameplay designed to keep players playing," but this was ridiculous. Admittedly, if you could read the interface it was probably a lot easier…

And then I fell on my ass in the middle of the main plaza, the belltower ringing steadily above me.

I blinked in confusion. This was not the tavern. This was not the tavern at all.

I looked askance at my mug. I considered pouring it out, but another player appeared a few yards away from me, mid-swing. He looked around in confusion, muscles tense, with no clue what was going on.

I nodded to myself. Good, it wasn't my drink.

I took another sip. I liked my drink.

More players kept appearing in the enormous central plaza of the starting town, filling it much too densely for someone used to an American personal bubble of four feet. There was a hum of conversation, players speculating and complaining - apparently a forcefield prevented leaving the plaza. I overheard the phrase "log out" in worried tones from several different groups.

I took a gulp of my drink, trying to bury a surge of nervousness. If there were a system announcement, it could have just as easily been accomplished by mass private message...though this method did ensure a focused audience.

The bell tower fell silent, which drew the attention of the players upwards. Before their eyes, crimson hexagons overtook the sky, spreading like a cancer special effect in a medical drama. Conversation died, and I heard one player whisper, "So cool…"

I looked at him askance. Cool? Kind of. But not the word I would have chosen.

To me, this display simply felt...ominous.

The ominous feeling didn't go away when hexagons began to blanket the sky, appearing in a manner similar to a .jpg image loading on an old computer - bursting into being and then the image resolution increasing until it had finished loading. It felt completely unnatural in this simulated world, which despite the player HUD did a good job of feeling "natural."

Then they began to bleed.

Dark red fluid seeped from the hexagon as if a giant vein behind the sky had been cut. It fell unnaturally, ignoring the game physics and pooling in the air above the bell tower. The wound in the sky continued to coalesce, throbbed as it was struck by lightning, twisted as if it were a womb with some monster struggling to escape into the world.

The pool of blood settled down somewhat and ceased its chaotic gyrations. From there, it slowly oozed into the shape of a giant figure, as if being poured into a mold and given fine detail at the same time.

In less than a minute, from clear skies a giant figure in a thick red robe had appeared. I felt sympathy for the ancient Jews going to pray before God.

A pregnant paused filled the air, only to be filled by the Word of God. The voice, though soft, echoed strangely in my ears as if it were coming from every particle of the air around me.

"_Attention, Player Characters. Welcome to world of me. My name is Kayaba Akihito."_

I spent more time trying to make out what he was saying than anything else, but at that name I paused. Oh. So it really was God...the God of Sword Art Online, in the pixels.

"_...I'm sure that you are aware that you are missing from the main menu logout button."_

Thank God he was going slowly, for drama. So, this was an announcement about the missing logout feature. Something of a major glitch, considering the nature of the game hardware. I expected there would be a class action lawsuit about it at some point for millions. I would probably be entitled to about twenty bucks for "emotional trauma" once the lawyers took their share.

Kayaba's hand rose into the air slowly, then tapped the air where a player interface would be if he were a normal player. The menu that appeared was as colossal as the figure that had summoned it.

"_This is not game error. I repeat, this is not game error. It is Sword Art Online function. You do not log out allowed. NerveGear cannot power off or remove."_

I felt my jaw begin to slack, and my ability to focus enough to get the gist of Kayaba's words took a nosedive. I started missing words, because there was no way I had understood him properly. Being stuck here was...intentional?

"_If NerveGear removed, it _ microwave your brain. Unfortunately family and friends of players tried to NerveGear of some players. As result, from real world and Aincrad, 213 players - dead."_

213 players...had died? Because somebody took off their NerveGear, and it microwaved their brain? What the hell was this, some Saw-like deathtrap? I felt my hands clench into fists at the unfairness of it. 213 people, dead because their loved ones had gotten worried. I heard the sound of porcelain shatter, and realized I'd squeezed the mug so hard it had burst into pixels in my hands.

"_News - around the world have reported this. As result, people know not remove NerveGear of you. Risk of NerveGear of you remove now is small._

"I hope you to focus on clear the game. You have to relax. I want you to remember, all methods revive player have been removed in the game. If HP of your avatar is off to zero, NerveGear of you will microwave your brain."

Relax? When we were trapped in a Death Game by a psychopath who had already murdered more than 200 people?

When we were stuck in an MMO, a grinding game, where the only way to clear new content was to have dozens of players die dozens of times learning attack patterns? With no way for players to share their discoveries if they died in the fight? With no respawn? With no wiki to tell you the strategy? With no reroll allowed?

In this game, there was only death.

"_There is only one means of escape: I will end the game. Currently, the first floor you Aincrad. If you make your way through the dungeon, defeat the boss of the floor, you will proceed next floor. The game will be cleared on the floor 100, when you kill end boss."_

I saw absolutely no reason to believe that. It sounded like a way for him to watch as thousands of people died, for real, while fighting virtual lizards.

_"Finally, I added a presence to the storage of your goods from me. Please refer to your storage of goods list."_

I didn't move, but my inventory opened by itself and scrolled to a mirror. The mirror shattered in a flash of blue light, like I'd seen at character creation. The light faded...and I felt slightly shorter, even though I still stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd. I looked down at my hands...and felt that my tan was gone, and that my hands looked infinitely more familiar than the ones I'd made during character generation. I raised one to my hair, which had been shoulder length and blonde. Instead I felt close-cropped hair, which I knew to be dark brown without looking.

Somehow, we were now our real selves.

Strangely, that was when the panic set into the crowd. I'd have thought it would have been during the announcement that we were all going to die, but being here in our "real" bodies was apparently the last straw.

Kayaba ignored them and pressed on, his voice as unrelenting as a tidal wave crashing onto a panicking coastal city.

"_I would like to announce the development of the first SAO content within this time: a system for simulating Thaumaturgy. In other words, to create a strange mystery or wonder called [Spells]. It is a complete and accurate simulation to the best of my ability as a _."_

The word "Thaumaturgy" had been in English, which threw me for a second.

_"Please note that skills and items updated because of Thaumaturgy content. Items _ [Teleport Crystal] and skills _ [Night Vision] have been removed because Spells. Unnecessary._

"I _ you to increase your skills as a user of Thaumaturgy. Essential is to be able to clear the game."

"Now, perhaps, why you are wondering? Developer Kayaba Akihito, maker NerveGear, why you do this? Old saying: 'to magic use is for walk with death.' If you want to reveal my reason, you are beat game. When it comes to be know, I would like to think you agree.

"However, if you good magic user, I happy you. Reason of me Is the main plot of the game SAO, please make an effort to think about this mystery and solve it.

"This will end the tutorial for the official announcement SAO."

"Good luck."

The giant Kayaba-figure slumped in the air, like the body had disappeared from the robes, Jedi-style. Before the robes had fallen any distance, they dissolved into droplets of blood and faded into the sky, where the hexagons had begun to break up.

None of that mattered, because the riot had already started.

I stood in the plaza, motionless, the crowd buffeting me about as they physically fled the announcement, as if they could run away from it. I continued to stand there, dumbfounded, ignoring the others as their panic reaction overtook any logic. After all, there was nowhere to run to.

When I came out of my stupor, night had begun to fall. I looked around in confusion - the plaza was entirely empty. Had I had a waking nightmare? Was the NerveGear driving me crazy, like the Virtual Boy had blinded those kids?

I knew I hadn't lost it, but the thought that maybe I was just insane was a pleasant alternative to the reality of Sword Art Online.

I stumbled back to Mika's Tavern, and was greeted with a cheerful smile and wave by Mika. The way she completely ignored the obvious depression of the Players in the street, like their suffering at the announcement of the beginning of a Death Game didn't matter...it creeped me out. Like she were some kind of sociopath instead of just an NPC.

Still, she let me sleep in one of the extra beds for free, which was more than many people were getting. I'd seen plenty lying in the streets, unresponsive to the world. They were perfectly safe - they couldn't take damage inside the city - but it still looked like the roads were strewn with corpses.

I collapsed into the bed and closed my eyes, trying to forget the image. Hopefully the world would make sense when I woke up.

Eight hours later, the in-game clock read 0500. I spent thirty minutes searching my menu options, just in case, but the logout function was still nowhere to be found. An image of the players collapsed on the side of the streets with the vacant expression of the hopeless and the damned came to my mind, and I slowly rose from the bed. I didn't want to sleep any more. I didn't want to have that face.

I reflexively shivered in the pre-dawn chill as I stepped outside, though the cold air didn't really affect me the same way it would in the real world. For one thing, I had no arm hair to stand on end - the "real body" hadn't included body hair, for whatever reason.

The town felt...different, with an almost abandoned feel to it. Like I had entered the bad part of a big city, where the residents looked sullen and the commuters ignored their surroundings as hard as they could, as if by ignoring it they could be somewhere else. Yesterday afternoon people had raced each other in the streets, screamed about quests they'd found out about...had fun in their new game. In one night, the festive mood had turned to despair - the streets were more or less empty of PCs, and most of the ones I did see seemed listless and despondent. Maybe they didn't have any Col and couldn't sleep in an inn? Or, looking at the way they tended to slouch and move slowly, maybe they didn't sleep at all. Combined with the pre-dawn darkness, it looked like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. I shivered a little bit, observing how quickly the mood went from the mindless enthusiasm of being the "F1rst!11!" into a new game to the shell-shock of "The Rapture came, and I got left behind."

Then, in the soulless, lifeless mass of humanity, I saw a person. He moved through the streets with purpose, ignoring the lifeless players around him - and it struck me that he looked like a Player Character. Like the game had just started for him, and he knew he was a Protagonist.

He had equipped some sort of white jumpsuit, a red scarf that partially obscured his face, and a curved sword. Most of the players in the city still wore their starting equipment. The man - more of a kid, really, though I'd seen younger soldiers - stopped at a vendor. I watched, silent, unsure of my hesitation, of what I was looking for. He remained there for less than thirty seconds before turning sharply and sprinting towards the city gates. The other players, much like the NPCs, ignored him.

How old was that guy? Eighteen, maybe? And he was clearly headed out to grind levels...so that he could fight bosses, and "clear the game." To complete the quest given to us by that madman, Kayaba Akihiko.

I walked while I thought. How many were there, like that guy? Who would risk their lives to clear the game on nothing more concrete than the promise of a mass murderer that he would grant them their freedom if they did so? There had to be some who believed Kayaba would let them out if they beat the game. Others might clear out of a fear of not obeying the whims of the game's God. Worst of all, some would fight to die, to escape this game through the fastest, least shameful method.

I slowed down when I realized where I was walking. I stopped underneath the portcullis for the city gates, artifical dawn beginning to brighten the area. I hesitated.

This was something I could, and probably should, do. There were children in the game - real kids, that hadn't gone through elementary school yet. I'd never actually been deployed, but my Platoon Sergeant was a crusty old NCO with more than enough stories about child soldiers in the Middle East. I know what combat stress could do to a person that young - and to those who weren't trained to deal with it, which was probably everyone in the game. Except, maybe, me. I could go out there and make a _difference._ I had spent years of training and practical exercises learning how to keep people alive in situations worse than this one.

Forget clearing the game - that was probably a fantasy. What I _could_ do was keep people alive as long as possible while they repeatedly threw themselves into harms way for no tangible reason until a world government hacked the game and broke us out. I knew that I could do it, right in the core of my soul.

My legs shook, my fists tightened into balls, and my fingernails dug deep into my palms. I squeezed my eyes shut before tears could overtake them and turned my head away from the gate...

Because even with that certainty of my ability to help, I still couldn't make myself take that step outside the city, across the boundary of the Safe Zone.

If I went out there, by myself, I could die. And there would be nobody to save me. No field medic to stabilize me, no helicopter to rush me to a surgical unit, and no jet to get me to a first world hospital. I wouldn't even have a battle buddy to say a prayer and avenge me.

The thought of going out there alone terrified me, and more than anything else I was grateful for the game's inability to fully model my physical fear response.

I tried to swallow the nervous lump in my throat - a reflex action, the game couldn't simulate that well - and mustered the tattered shreds of my courage and pride. This was more than just some chance to be a hero. Here, in this Death Game, I felt _obligated_ to be the leader and warrior that I had sworn a solemn oath to be. To uphold a moral Creed, portions of which flashed in my mind: I am a guardian of freedom. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.

With thoughts of the values I had sworn to uphold ringing in my head...I stepped back away from the invisible line and silently began to hate myself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Fate/Revelation Online: Mind Games**

**Author's Notes:** I have returned from my field training exercise and am once again able to devote some time to this fic. I would also like to note the peculiar nature of SAO, which is such that even the most blatant expy of characters that should logically be well-known to the players are seen as a completely new and original beings.

**Chapter Quote:** _The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing._ \- Socrates

**Chapter Two: Flipping the Switch**

**Death Game: Day One**

The old man in front of me had the most frustratingly oblivious smile plastered on his face, which was visible even beneath the prodigious cover of his poorly trimmed grey beard. He wore thick, faded green robes and a hoodless cloak of the same color, both of which looked thoroughly out of place given how warm it was inside his shop. A shapeless, pointy hat (green, of course), thick wooden staff, and an assortment of pouches and scrolls hanging from his belt completed the NPC's "wizard" ensemble.

"You mean you don't sell alcohol?" I asked him.

He leaned forward, placing the majority of his weight on his staff. "What?" He took a hand off of his staff, teetering precariously, and picked at the inside of his ear. "Did you say something?"

My expression soured further. "I asked if you sold alcohol," I repeated.

He cocked his head to the side in confusion, causing his disaster of a hat to start sliding off his head. "I don't think so. We don't sell that, do we Pyrite?" He addressed his last question to a gold colored lizard sleeping on a nearby countertop. The lizard did not deign to waken and answer its owner's question.

This was apparently sufficient answer for the old man, who nodded and turned back to me. "No, no, we don't have any of that here. Why do you ask?"

Because I want to not be able to form long-term memories, I didn't answer. Booze was still in the game, right? I vaguely recalled that being part of the Congressional uproar over the game.

"Your, uh - " I wracked my brain for the right word, "Sign out front says 'Reorx's Brewery.'" The place certainly looked like a brewery - I could see a still in the back room, and wooden barrels were scattered haphazardly along the walls. The scent of ale permeated the entire building in a relaxing sort of way, like you'd find at a bar for middle-aged professionals.

The old man's eyebrows narrowed in confusion. "That's not right; I don't own a brewery."

I would have made a comment about how he clearly _did_ own a brewery, but the old man had already turned his (limited, senile) focus away from me and begun striding towards the door. He didn't appear to need the staff to walk with, though he resumed leaning on it once outside. I blinked, and looked down at the old man's lizard. Had I just been blown off by an NPC?

The lizard cracked an eyelid open and held my gaze for a second. Then it belched, rolled over, and resumed its slumber.

Great. Now I'd been blown off by an NPC _and_ his pet lizard. Feeling somewhat foolish, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and stalked out of the store, fully intent on leaving the old man to his poorly-programmed stupidity.

"Know I know a spell to fix this...now what was it called…" he muttered as I walked past.

I stopped and cocked my head in interest. Spell? SAO wasn't supposed to have magic - oh, right, Thaumaturgy. I'd sort of forgotten about the whole "content patch" in light of the unexpected nerf to the logout feature. I smiled a bit at my own joke.

"Fireball!" the old man proclaimed, his voice solid and clear, like the tolling of a church bell.

An enormous ball of flames erupted from the tip of the staff, which was pointed at the offending sign. The first wave of heat struck me like a physical blow, and I fell gracelessly to my ass, catching myself with my hands. The fire felt powerful enough to flash-fry my eyebrows, even from a distance, and the roaring sound of the air combusting deafened me and shook the world. Then it struck the wooden sign, right inside the "O" in "Reorx," and exploded.

The shockwave knocked me completely prone. I lay there for what felt like an hour, dazed and confused, afterimages from the explosion dancing at the edges of my vision.

"Great spell, fireball," the old man chuckled to himself, his voice back to its normal absentmindedly cheerful tone. "Knew it'd get rid of that sign."

I blinked, trying to clear my vision, and slowly scrabbled to my feet. The entire wooden sign was engulfed in flames, and standing across the street from it still felt like being next to an open oven. "What the hell did you just do?" I was pretty sure NPCs weren't supposed to go around exploding their own shops.

"Oh?" the old man asked. "You've never seen Thaumaturgy? I can show you how to start, if you'd like." A chatwheel-style dialogue box opened up next to him, with only one option: [?]. I hesitated for a moment, then tapped it. Was this some sort of bizarre tutorial quest for magecraft? It felt like a bit much for procedural generation, but SAO's quest generation had been very well done so far.

He hummed to himself for a moment, then scratched at his beard. "Mmm. My son and his cousins were always better at this...well. The basic idea is that you -[verb?] mana from the world, -[different verb] prana [that wasn't a Japanese word], and then - [verb, maybe?] a - [noun?] into the real world."

The sudden shift in the man's dialogue was the most immersion-shattering thing I'd yet encountered, like I wasn't even playing the same game anymore. His vocabulary had shifted from "absent-minded grandfather" to "lecturing professor," and I had no way of understanding the technical terms.

"...what?" I asked.

"- mana from the world, - prana, and - a - into the real world," he repeated.

"I don't understand," I said. "Can you be...simpler?"

The old man stood there, frozen in perfect, unnatural stillness. I considered poking him - NPCs couldn't lag out, could they? Wait, shit, could _I_ lag out? That would kill me, right? Did that mean my life - everyone's life - was dependant on _public hospital WiFi_? How were we still alive?

The questions were troubling and unnerving, so I did what I always did whenever things started to get spooky: I ignored it. It wasn't like I could affect WiFi quality, so I put it out of my mind.

My ability to selectively ignore anything that bothered me (or that I simply didn't feel like dealing with) was razor-honed in its efficacy. It probably wasn't the best way to live my life - one doesn't change for the better if one refuses to acknowledge problems - but at least it was low-stress.

I looked around myself nervously and felt vaguely like I'd done something wrong. The fire on the brewery sign had spread to the rest of the shop, and was well on its way to engulfing the entire establishment. Meanwhile the old man continued to not move - had I broken him? People were starting to gather in the street, mostly NPCs freaking out about the fire, but a few curious-looking players were in the mix as well, obvious because of their uniform starting equipment.

One particularly large, bearded man (hey, was that another American?) caught my eye, talking to another man in a leather duster that looked like it belonged on the set of El Dorado. I could just make out the words, "The building's on fire, but it wasn't my fault!" which sounded pretty interesting. Just as I was about to give up on my broken questgiver and go investigate that other guy, the old NPC returned to life like nothing had happened.

"Think of a word," the old man said slowly.

"Crazy," I blurted out. Were we playing word-association now? This quest was all kinds of fucked up. And it wasn't how I imagined "Thaumaturgy" working, either. To me, Thaumaturgy sounded more like rituals and "magical science" and stuff, like in the Dresden Files. Not just imagining stuff happening...

"No, _think_ of a word. Don't say it out loud," he responded. "Ruins the point if you say it out loud, like eating a sandwich with a fork."

'_Frustration,'_ I thought.

"Close your eyes and focus on the image of the word. Think of nothing else."

I immediately thought of all the books I'd read with a scene where the protagonist has to "not" think of things and then thinks of them. '_I guess sometimes fiction is pretty true to life._

"Make the word bigger, and more important," he continued. "Memorize it perfectly."

I focused on the word "Frustration," mentally picturing it in Arial Bold, font size 9000, reflexively obeying the questgiver. I tried to relax and even out my breathing like I was doing yoga.

"Now, set the word on fire and let it burn into the real world."

I let mental flames loose at the bottom of the letters - and felt the beginnings of the System Assist manifest at the edges of my consciousness. It threw me off - I hadn't expected the System Assist to kick in - and my mental image wavered. The System Assist kept going, and it felt like something was trying to force my thought process along a specific way, and I reflexively tried to shake my head and clear the image -

And my focus returned to the street. I felt the uncomfortable heat of the fire (which had utterly  
enveloped the shop, and looked to be making inroads to the neighboring establishments) against my skin, saw that the crowd had nearly doubled in size, and...my hand was pointed at the old man?

[Bad Luck! Quest Failed.]

Huh. So it actually had been a quest and holy shit that was a lot of exp. Enough to give me my first level-up and then some. A menu popped up, asking me to pick between two stats, which were unfortunately represented in kanji…

"A great effort, but it appears I am a bad teacher," the old wizard mused to himself, stroking his beard. Then he laughed. "Well, I wouldn't be me if I got upset with people for not being as amazing as I am," he said, puffing up his bony chest. I snorted at the ridiculous image, grinning to myself at the NPC's antics.

"So...wait, that was the quest to learn magic, right?" I asked.

The old man shook his head. "No, no, I was simply trying to teach you the basics of Thaumaturgy. Magic is something else entirely, something impossible."

I put [Magic] under the mental heading [Future Content Patch] and moved on. "Can I try again?"

He leaned forward onto his staff, eyes creased with the intensity of his smile. "Nope."

"What?" That didn't make sense; the whole point of Tutorial quests was that you could infinitely repeat them to get used to the System Assist.

"If you were meant to learn from me, you would have succeeded. You simply need a more - [correct? appropriate? suitable?] instructor. There's a young magus down the street I'd recommend - he runs a tavern; the sign is a picture of a broken, leaking cauldron." He halted for a moment, then winked. "And he makes an excellent beer. A beer sounds good about now..."

I laughed, genuinely amused by the NPC's ability to adapt and respond. "Thanks, old man. Though, um...you might want to focus on something else right now."

"Hmm?" he responded.

"Your uh, shop is burning down. Burned down."

He looked behind him to the shop. Then left, then right. "...that's not my shop. My shop is three blocks that way," he said, pointing down the street. "Why did I think that was my shop?" he muttered to himself, stroking his beard.

I heard a soft, high-pitched growling noise come from about ankle-height. The old wizard and I looked down.

"Pyrite!" he exclaimed. "Where have you been? Not safe for you to be wandering about on your own; that building over there's on fire!" He scooped the lizard up and deposited it onto the brim of his hat. The lizard promptly pooped on the hat, presumably to show his displeasure. The old man didn't seem to notice.

"Well," I said slowly. "It's been great, but I'm going to go to that tavern you told me about."

"Oi!" I heard a deep voice shout from down the street. As a relatively tall American, I had the luxury of being able to see over majority of the Japanese-sized NPC crowd and see the angry-looking, thickly-built, heavily bearded short man approaching. "What in blazes happen'd to me shop?"

The old man looked from the inferno of the brewery, to the direction of the voice, back to the inferno, then to me. "I shall guide you to it," he declared slowly.

Then he bolted away from the NPC whose shop he'd presumably destroyed faster than any old man should be able to run. I thought about it for less than a second and followed after him. Like hell did I want to have to explain this.

The tavern (more of a dive bar, really,) was arranged in a peculiarly haphazard fashion. Battered wooden tables were scattered throughout without any regards to symmetry or spacing, the windows were placed on the wall facing the alleyway instead of the front, and the bar itself had a visible downward slope to the right that necessitated a firm grip on your drink, lest it slide away from you.

The bartender, a young man with shaggy dark hair and thick glasses, dropped a mug at the left end of the bar and let go. The mug slid down the surface of the bar, picking up speed until it came to an abrupt halt in my hand. I raised the glass in thanks and took a long pull. It had an...interesting taste to it. It was like butterscotch, only smoother and stouter. Having decided that I liked the taste four beers ago, I saw no reason to stop on the fifth.

"My - over there told me you were - in the basics of Thaumaturgy" the bartender said, nodding his head towards the old arsonist, who was currently passed out at the bar. I heard a hissing noise come from his mug, and a closer look confirmed it to be from the lizard, which was making ineffectual efforts to swim up out of the half-empty mug. I shook my head and took another drink.

The NPC bartender continued to look at me expectantly, and I finally noticed the dialogue prompt to begin the quest. "Yeah, sure," I responded, trying to fake some enthusiasm. Then I remembered it was an NPC and went back to finishing my beer while he rambled. The quest dialogue certainly seemed more in-depth than the old pyromaniac's; I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Some sort of long-winded analogy for electricity...or water.

Shit. I'd kind of been hoping that my Japanese wasn't as awful as I thought - I'd gotten along perfectly fine with the old man - but then again, he spoke with a vocabulary appropriate for a simple old man. The bartender sounded better educated. There was probably a fluff story about that, and I fervently hoped that I would never have to learn it.

Once the speech had finally concluded, my Skills menu automatically opened. I started in surprise, nearly spilling my beer, as the menu auto-scrolled down to [Spells]. That...wasn't there before. Spells auto-selected itself, opening up onto a grandiose list of...one spell. [- Activation]. Wait, the kanji there was the one for Road, and the other for Loop...Road Loop? Circuit? Circuit Activation? Ah, that would explain the electricity metaphor I'd mostly missed.

I tapped the button and [Circuit Activation] toggled on.

Nothing happened.

A stick with some sort of carved grip was thrust in my general direction by the bartender. I took hold of it with my off hand, taking care not to spill the beer in my other.

"Try to picture yourself with the wand," he said, producing his own stick. Wait, was that a wand? It would make sense, seeing as this was a magic tutorial...and that must have been what that one word was. So, imagine myself with the wand? I had the wand. By "with" did he mean something else? I mean, wands were pretty phallic imagery to begin with - not as much as staves, but still, that _couldn't_ be what he meant.

I snapped myself back to the real world in time to catch the last of the [Quest Dialogue].

"If you are the wand, and also is world, three of you is one."

I paused, mentally parsing that. I'm with the wand...and the world is also with the wand...and the three of us are the same? Sounded familiar, only the text I remembered had more to do with the Word and the Beginning, but the idea was simple enough.

I closed my eyes and tightened my fingers on the polished wood of the grip. I imagined myself as being the wand, and tried to keep the sex puns outside of my conscious thoughts. I reminded myself that the System Assist would pop in any second, and tried to relax in preparation for the automated assistance software.

"Now, shake the wand then - of you out of it."

After a moment of thought...Translation: Swing the wand, and something of me would come out of it…

It was pure bad luck that the System Assist kicked in the moment I fell off my chair, giggling drunkenly, unable to resist the obvious jokes about things "coming out of" my "wand" which was also "me." When I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling, a Quest Status icon had popped up in the middle of the screen.

[Quest Failed; Hard Work - No. Try Harder!]

Compared to last time, the experience reward was only about a tenth of what it had been. Huh. So if you weren't trying when the System Assist kicked in, you didn't get the full experience reward. I guess that made sense? Like, if it gave out that full reward every time, then people would just half-ass the quest to grind levels safely.

"Mmm," the bartending wizard said, scratching at the back of his head with his wand. "Well, - you have talent of Thaumaturgy. However, you have talent my - no. Find other instructor you have to."

So why were the [Thaumaturgy Instructors] sending me to different [Trainers]? Because I had no talent for their style? That didn't really make sense; all of the other [System Assist Trainers] were able to teach everyone the process of using the [System Assist] without having to punt players around.

Then again...the System Assist for [Thaumaturgy] was a purely mental one, which sounded more like science fiction than anything a VR console should be able to duplicate. I could sort of understand how the [System Assist] picked up on you initiating a physical movement and guiding you through the rest of the movement, but picking up on a _thought process_? That had to be difficult, because nobody thought in the exact same way. Maybe that was why I was getting sent to [Trainer] after [Trainer]? Because I had to find the right way to "think" about using [Thaumaturgy]?

No wonder Kayaba had had to lock us all into a Death Game to get this patch past the game developers - this magic system was the most unnecessarily complicated piece of homebrew shit I'd seen since I stopped reading RPG creation threads on /tg/. Still, if it was anything like a typical homebrew it was bound to be stupidly imbalanced, so learning it was bound to be useful. With a few levels and a [Teleport] spell, going outside the Safe Zones wouldn't be nearly so...intimidating.

I had a moment of thought that I was simply a coward and that no amount of preparation would give me the confidence to risk my own life. It was a troubling idea. I ignored it and shoved the thought into the dusty corner of my brain with hospital WiFi and any other number of things that I should probably have been worrying about but didn't want to.

I ended up getting one last beer to "commiserate my sorrow," before heading out of the bar, thoroughly buzzed. Did SAO even have public intoxication laws? I opened the door with that concern at the front of my thoughts, but the moment I stepped out onto the street my buzz vanished and I returned to being clear-headed immediately. I blinked in surprise at the sudden change of mental processes.

Well, shit. You couldn't go on a proper barcrawl if the game purged your intoxication whenever you stepped into public. I would bet on the [Purge] effect being some sort of legal thing so that little kids didn't see hordes of drunken adults wandering around the virtual streets, scarring their impressionable minds.

Mumbling complaints about the unfairness of it all to myself, I walked off in search of another [Trainer], vaguely irritated that I wasn't stumbling and in a good mood for the process like I'd planned on.

I spent the next few hours taking a random walk of the town. Of course it wasn't _truly_ a random walk, and I was well aware of the degree of computerized randomization necessary for a "true" random walk from my degree in Economics. The degree was largely useless except for periodically allowing me to be smugly superior in arguments, a quality I had further enhanced with a minor in Philosophy.

By late afternoon the town markets had begun to show signs of life, even if the pulse was weak and thready. A few dozen individuals were relaxing at the nicer stalls, their non-starter equipment making the source of their gold obvious. Were I investing in the market I'd still be short-selling it and withholding credit, but SAO hadn't been designed as an Excel simulator for people who hated to play games, and therefore lacked anything resembling corporate structure.

I saw other Players talking intently with half-crazed hobos, gnarled old witches, ancient ascetic monks, and strangely dressed gypsies. Presumably they were going through [Circuit Activation] as well. After seeing enough of the huddles, I noticed that the NPCs always seemed to be instructing players one at a time, instead of the occasional mass lecture that the other System Assist Trainers had given.

There had to be a massive number of Thaumaturgy Instructors, if ten thousand players were each expected to have a private ten-minute (or longer) conversation with them just to learn how to _use_ Magecraft, much less any spells. And there were a _lot_ of ten-minute conversations to go through before [Circuit Activation] was achieved.

"Feel your emotions flowing through you like a deep river, new friend!" my latest instructor gushed at me. It felt strange taking advice from a girl who couldn't be much older than fifteen. It felt stranger when said girl's long red hair framed exotic green eyes (the entire eye, not just the iris), and that she apparently saw nothing strange about wearing a halter top, 4-inch miniskirt, and thigh-high boots of the same purple hue.

"Let the feelings overflow, and you will have true strength!" she continued.

I tried to keep the emotions flowing through me from flowing straight into the gutter with minimal success. Japan, why you do this to me?

Her companion (_companion?_) picked up when the emotional approach failed. I had an even more difficult time following her lecture. The other girl was shorter, though the way she spoke gave her a greater air of maturity and...well, intelligence. Her close-cut raven-black hair was so dark it was inged with purple, and she had dressed in an equally revealing outfit. Hers consisted of a midnight blue cloak and black, skin-tight leotard that left the entirety of her legs bare. The hooded cloak cast her face in shadow, which left, well, her chest as her most visible feature.

I consoled myself with the fact that at least she _sounded_ older.

"I said he did not look like kind of thing - your passion." she told her cheerful friend. "Focus, discipline, and the control are requires to - magic energy." This had the sound of a longstanding argument, an impression that was not at all dissuaded by the way the other instructor ignored her.

She taught me a chant that sounded vaguely demonic and that was definitely not Japanese, but it didn't do anything for me. I'd never been one for meditation, and right now a cold shower sounded a lot better. I felt like I'd been perving on a cartoon character from my youth, only it was just plain creepy when those characters were real people (NPCs, whatever) and triggered the "waaaaaay too young for that holy shit" response.

Goddammit Japan, did you really somehow manage to ruin hentai with hyper-realism? Seriously, what the hell.

Twenty minutes of walking far, far away from that section of town found me talking to a middle aged, heavily tattooed Irishman in a park. He had an enormous wolfhound with him, who seemed to act more like an intelligent NPC than a dog. Was this the instructor for a Pet Class?

Unfortunately, before I could ask the instructor that he had to go through a long, pre-recorded spiel about the power of the earth. It sounded vaguely like standard Wiccan superstition, which I'd never been overly fond of. Still, hey, if it could end with a pet class, I'd scroll through the fluff like it was an End User License Agreement. Finally, after thirty minutes...

"Ah," he said. "Familiars is beyond the beginner magi. Long after, once are - with the flow of the Earth, probably."

I turned around and walked away without even listening to the rest of the hippy sermon. Fuck if I was going to listen to an NPC go on about environmental conservation in an MMORPG. And screw being a Druid with no Animal Companion; they probably didn't even have Fleshraker Dinosaurs in SAO.

The first time I actually felt _It_ was listening to a fiery-haired, insufferably arrogant young man with a guitar case at his feet. Or was it a lute? Or a sittern? I'd never really been up on the difference between non-guitar stringed instruments.

He talked about Names (capital N) of things, and of how similar objects had a "sympathy" for each other. I liked the ideas - they sounded like an orderly system with rules, which I'd heretofore seen none of in the Thaumaturgy system. When given the choice between forcing my will upon the world by Naming it, or by drawing on existing connections via sympathy, I marveled at the game engine for the choice. Instead of a proscribed mental image, now I had a choice. Probably done to fuse two separate instructors into one, but it was still convenient.

I focused on the mental image of a rubber band, stretched to the utmost between two stones. Then the band snapped back together, and the stones collided and rubbed off on each other -

And felt a blazing, burning heat like the sun begin to dawn inside my lungs. I tried to ignore it, focusing as the System Assist took hold of my thoughts, but it kept building, getting worse and worse -

It felt like I'd thrown up into my lungs, burning with nausea and acid -

I panicked and fell to the ground, screaming and flailing, breaking the moment. The pain of the heat vanished quickly, but I lay on the ground for several more minutes, letting my breathing calm.

"It gets easier," my instructor said, concern and sympathy writ across his previously smug features. "Like working a new muscle."

Now that my initial panic was over, the only pain that lingered had that sort of stretchy pain feel to it that you got from overworking yourself at a gym after a long period of inactivity. It even had that same bizarre urge to try again, to flex into the pain just to feel it.

My eyes drifted to my HP bar, which for the first time had dipped below 100%. I blinked in surprise. Even here, in a Safe Zone? Even if it was only 10%, it was still unnerving. I'd never run across that particular penalty for a Spell Failure in other games - usually the spell fizzling was deemed penalty enough.

Fucking homebrews.

My instructor gave me a mug of tea and sent me on my way. I sipped at the tea and seriously reconsidered the whole Thaumaturgy thing. Magic that hurt you if you screwed up didn't seem like the way to reduce risk in the wild. What if I'd guessed wrong, and this magic system wasn't "bullshit broken OP" like half of the homebrew systems, and was instead ridiculously gimped and worthless like the other half? What if it was worse than the Oriental Adventures Samurai from 3.5? Well, technically OA was 3e, but I always pulled Iaijutsu Focus out of it for 3.5e Factotums…

A woman's voice interrupted me, singing as clear and pure as a church bell from somewhere down the way. I could barely make out the words, but they pecked at my mind like crows, and my feet followed the noise to its source of their own accord. After two blocks, three side alleys, and one trip through an NPC's house, I found myself in front of her.

She sat astride a mare of purest white, its head lowered and eyes closed as if it too had been entranced by her voice. The woman herself wore burnished chainmail and carried a bronze buckler strapped to her left arm with a long, wing-tipped spear in her right. A ring gleamed on the finger of her spear-hand, seeming to draw in the light and condense it. Her hair cascaded down her back from beneath a golden helm, and I slowed to a halt, my jaw slowly going slack.

She didn't have any sort of commanding beauty, not of the kind that I would lust after. It was more of a power of presence. Beautiful in the same way that an F-15 soaring across the sky blasting "Sail" was beautiful: in it's majesty, and the feelings that majesty evoked.

The verse came to a close, and I met the woman's eyes as she looked up from her song. No words were exchanged, but a dialogue tree with only one option appeared. I selected it without hesitation.

She dismounted from her horse, which responded to her movement with naught but a sleepy puff of its nostrils. The armored woman lay her spear against the steed before reaching down to the ground and gathering seven stones from the roadside, each small and smooth. She looked back up at me until she had eye contact, and began to sing.

"A drink I bear to thee, / column of battle! / With might mingled, / and with bright glory: / 'tis full of song, / and salutary saws, / of potent incantations, / and joyous discourses," she sang, strident and clear.

"Sigrunar thou must know, / if victory thou wilt have, / and on thy sword's hilt grave them; / some on the chapes, / some on the guard, / and name doubtful the name of Tyr." The ring on her finger flashed, and she traced a symbol into one of the stones, the light touch of her finger melting the stone into the shape of her design.

She continued to sing of runes and magic, of Alrunar to guard against bewitchment, Biargrunar to aid with birth, Brimrunar for safety at sea, Limrunar to heal, Malrunar to aid in speech, Hugrunar for wisdom, and the power they could hold for a young warrior. And with each named rune, she carved it into the solid flesh of the stone with her bare hands.

When she finally came to a halt, I realized that the inside of my mouth had dried out. I slowly closed my jaw and swallowed.

The woman - valkyrie? - held out her hands, still full of the rune-carved stones. I reached out, hesitantly, and took one from her. Turning it over, I realized it was the Hugrunar, the rune of wisdom. I looked back up at her, seeking guidance, but her only reaction was a smile, as if my selection had amused her.

I held the rune in my hand, confused. The previous NPCs had all given me a mental image to use, to focus on. She'd given me the rune, but...I didn't think that was what it was for. Was I supposed to come up with my own mental image? That didn't seem right; how would the System Assist know what thought to be looking for?

Shit, how _did_ it know what thought to look for anyway? It wasn't like a physical process, where everyone sort of moved in vaguely the same way. Brain chemistry was complicated and uniquely interconnected for each person. Maybe it was more of a specific _way_ of thought? Man, why couldn't any of my doctor friends be here; I just knew how to run a hospital. I was useless at any of the advanced medical stuff.

I closed my eyes and thought back on the feeling in my chest from last time. That...had definitely been _It_. But I didn't want to endure that slow buildup of heat and pain again. I'd always sucked at endurance activities, and had preferred to get discomfort out of the way as quickly as possible, even if it meant the discomfort was more intense.

Sprints over a long run, any day.

So, instead of the slowly dawning sun my last effort had invoked, I pictured a lightbulb in a dark room. It was plugged directly into a socket in the ceiling, and wires ran from it to a switch by the door. A switch was right inside the door on the left, at chest height.

I reached out and flipped the switch.

The bulb flicked on, light shining out into the room.

The heat-flash of pain was immediate and intense. I inhaled, instinctively trying to cool myself. The afternoon air felt frigid compared to the burning sensation of my flesh. My eyelids fluttered open, and drifted to the runestone, cool against my sweating palm.

I willed the heat into the stone -

The pain doubled -

I flipped the switch off, and the lightbulb winked out.

The heat bled out of me faster this time, and without the acid pain of bile. I also noticed, as my chest greedily heaved in lungfuls of air, that I hadn't taken any HP damage. So, you could cancel a spell gone awry to avoid damage. At least Thaumaturgy wasn't Eragon levels of stupid.

And in the center of my view hovered a textbox, proof of my victory. I grinned weakly.

[Congratulations! Quest Complete!]

"Congratulations, he who would be wise," my instructor echoed as her smile widened and became toothy, like a wolf. "You are now a magic user, one who walks with death. Struggle against the cruel chains of fate woven by the Norns, and you may yet become one of the wise."

I stood there, my breathing now mostly under my control, waiting for the last of the heat haze to fade. It felt like that one time I'd gotten heat stroke at a Field Training Exercise, dooming me to the Red Bead of Shame forever after. And yet...even in that half-delusional haze, I finally realized what was wrong with this picture.

She wasn't speaking Japanese.

Or English.

Confusion warred with magic-induced exhaustion and won out handily. Shaking my head to clear the last of the fog, I asked, "How...how can I understand you? You're not speaking English. It sounds...German?"

The wolf-grin turned even more feral. "Oh, you're going to be a fun one. Would you like me to tell you?"

I thought about it for a moment. I did want her to tell me, but somehow the response felt wrong - I stopped, and shook my head. "No," I said, slowly brought myself fully upright and squared my shoulders as I firmly met her gaze. "I want you to show me."

Her laughter matched the expression on her face. "Truly a magus in the making…" She bowed to me. "He Who Would Be Counted Among the Wise, sit, and I shall share with you the secrets of the Runes."

I sat.

I listened.

And I learned.


	3. Chapter 3

**Fate Revelation Online: Mind Games**

**Author's Notes:** Kudos to those who figure out who my compatriots are. Yes, they agreed to appear in this.

**Chapter Quote:** _Common sense is not so common._ \- Voltaire

**Chapter Three: Bright Ideas**

**Death Game: Day 32**

_Of course_ I figured out the translation spell two days before I ran into the only other Americans in SAO. They'd been gaming buds for years in the Real World who'd managed to pirate the game _and_ set up a proxy that tricked the NervGear into letting them on the Japanese servers. They'd thought the [Death Game] was a joke at first - a prank from the developers for stealing the game.

If only.

And now I was partying with them (in the traditional MMO sense, not the frat sense) instead of tinkering with Thaumaturgy while ensconced inside a Safe Zone. Unfortunately, I needed to be out here if I was going to even begin to use Thaumaturgy. Fucking fetch quests.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I didn't have to worry about my translation spell messing up the intricate social niceties that were required in a Japanese conversation.

"So then I saw something crawling across the road, looking half-dead," said Nephren. He was about as tall as me, though with a substantially larger frame that he'd covered with a hodgepodge of heavy armor. He was also the more talkative of the two, and carried a spiked mace that he tended to wave about for emphasis.

"I pulled over," Nephren continued. "It looked like a small dog - but it was a possum. Somebody must have hit it with their truck; you could see the poor thing's spine sticking out. It was still sort of flailing around, and I felt really bad for the little guy. So I went to put it out of its misery. I got out my maglight and just - WHACK." He mimed the swing with his mace for emphasis. "But possums are tough, so I had to just stand there on the side of the road beating the thing to death. Blood and bits of fur are going everywhere, and it's screaming like 'REEEE' and 'HSSSS' and shit, and I'm just wailing away at the back of its head trying to be a nice guy and do the right thing. Took like ten minutes; freaking ridiculous. I'd have shot it - you know, cleaner end and all - but I was worried about ricochets off the asphalt," he finished.

Yes, there was certainly no need for intricate social niceties with my current group. It was honestly sort of reassuring, having somebody like that with me on my first trip outside the Safe Zone. The bizarre part was that somehow, the story ended up being funny instead of macabre. '_That's probably the most entertaining part about hanging out with Nuga - Nephren,'_ I thought, mentally catching myself. He'd changed his name an hour ago, so I still caught myself thinking of him by his old tag.

"What about rabies?" I asked. "You had to get some of the thing's blood on you."

Nephren shook his head. "It's actually pretty rare for possums to have rabies. They get a bad rap for that but it's really the coons you have to watch for."

I eyed him suspiciously for a moment, expecting some sort of outrageously racist "coon" joke, but none followed. Huh.

My other newfound compatriot, Lambeard, was a quieter sort. He was even taller than me and about as broad as Nephren, which meant he absolutely dwarfed the Japanese players. He also had a thick beard where the rest of us were clean shaven. He could look at the cow monsters on the First Floor eye to eye, and the enormous two-handed warhammer he hefted around was certainly intimidating, even if it lacked the spikes of Nephren's mace.

By contrast, I'd brought a spear. The choice weapon of unskilled peasants since time immemorial, it let me put a comforting amount of distance between myself and anything that might try and rip me into pixels. It was also relatively easy to use the [Linear] attack with, which was nice, because I'd really only spent like an hour using the System Assist to learn how to fight. I'd been too busy learning to use Malrunar to get the game's auto-translate feature working (which was a really clever way to fluff that, honestly) to bother with the fighting aspects. I'd decided what I wanted to do in the game anyway, and it didn't involve flailing about with sharp bits of metal.

I was going to be a Wizard. An Enchanter, to be precise. I'd been an Enchanter/Tinkerer in WoW (literally the most gold-consuming profession combination possible), and magical enchantments for gear had been in enormously high demand. It hadn't been _profitable_, but I wasn't as concerned with turning in a profit in the Death Game.

I just wanted to do _something_ that felt constructive. And there was more to combat medicine than running around slapping tourniquets on people. The first principle was my favorite: fire superiority.

In the words of a genius tactician from the Netherlands, "They can't kill me if they're dead."

Unfortunately I'd run into a tiny snag with my plan to achieve Unlimited Power™: the Element Identification quest, which identified what spells a player could cast, had flagged Ether and an unknown for me. I had some sort of Rare Element.

Argo's Guide, which I'd been studying ever since I mastered the translation spell, hadn't had much info on Rare Elements. Even worse, all the existing info wasn't good. Not only would I probably have difficulty using most spells (if I could use them at all), but identifying a Rare Element was an entirely different quest that required gathering drops from outside the Safe Zone.

It was the most blatant bit of gameplay padding I'd run into in SAO. Why the hell was there an additional quest for the Rare Element, instead of just making them part of the regular Element Identification quest? What kind of sadist pads out the length of a Death Game?

"I think the buffs are starting to wear off," Lambeard said.

I checked the runes I'd traced onto the...what do you call the striking part of a hammer? Right, the head. I checked the runes on the head of the hammer. Honestly, this was kind of annoying - any other game would just give you a buff icon, with some sort of timer to indicate when it would wear off - but at least the visible indications were obvious. The Tyrunar, engraved thrice onto the hammer, had become smudged over the past two hours of combat.

Thankfully, the uses of Tyrunar, the most common combat amplification rune, were available via Argo's Guide.

I closed my eyes and flicked the switch in my mind, the familiar burn of magic thrumming through my Circuit. The pain had lessened with practice, although it was still distinctly uncomfortable.

"On thy hilt," I muttered, tracing the rune onto the base of the hammer. Then again onto the grip. "On thy guard." And finally onto the head of the hammer itself. "On thy chapes." Chapes were actually part of a scabbard, but Argo's Guide said the striking end of the weapon was the best place for the third rune to be placed. The verbal mnemonic still helped me cast the spell.

The runes glowed with faint light before dimming, now looking like nothing more than inked designs. I repeated the process with Nephren's maul and my spear, pausing to wipe sweat from my forehead once I'd finished. For some reason, Tyrunar took more out of me than the Malrunar I used for translation. I hadn't been able to use Tyrunar at all - even though it was supposed to be the easiest rune - until I started using the incantation. The Aria, as the game fluffed it. Truth be told I wasn't really sure what an aria was - the only time I'd heard the word before was in the title for a Castlevania game, but I don't think that was what they meant.

Neither of my party members had asked me about the chant. Lots of people had little focusing tricks for Thaumaturgy - the System Assist for it was particularly buggy and needed all the help it could get. Nephren and Lambeard were also still up in the air about whether or not they were going to _use_ the Thaumaturgy system. Nephren thought that hurling fireballs would be neat, but nobody had quite figured out how yet. Lambeard still hadn't found an instructor he liked - he'd done Circuit Activation, but none of the systems he'd seen (I.e. Runes and sympathy) appealed to him.

Oh well. There would probably be some sort of feat advantage to staying as a non-Caster. Hopefully it was better than the useless shite Fighters got in 3rd Edition.

"Looks like the camp's respawned," Nephren commented. "Let's go!" Before I could even get a look at them, he charged into the nearest group of cowmen.

Of course, there were downsides to questing with an unflappable redneck…

Nephren hit the first of the cowmen (they really looked too stupid to be proper "minotaurs") with an overhead blow with the maul, like he was trying to hammer a nail into the ground. The cowman bellowed in pain as its HP went into the yellow and it gained the [Staggered] condition. It's two companions stepped forward, and each launched a simple [Horizontal] at Nephren with their maces. The burly southerner managed to recover from the stall animation of his [Vertical] and catch the first on his maul, but the second hit him solidly in the ribs. His armor absorbed a decent chunk of the blow, but I could see a slice of his HP vanish.

Lambeard rushed past him with a mostly incoherent warcry and hit the [Staggered] cowman with an upwards [Diagonal] that looked a lot like a golf swing. With the bonus damage for attacking a [Helpless] target, it was more than enough to shatter the mob into pixels, EXP, and Col. Which irritated me; Staggered only impeded your actions without truly preventing them. It shouldn't give the [Helpless] condition.

Whining about mechanics wouldn't kill the mobs though. I took a more cautious approach, and thrust a [Linear] at the head of the cowman that had gotten the hit in on Nephren. But there was more to the game than caution, and the blow went wide when the mob recovered from its post-attack idle animation.

It turned to face me and I adjusted my grip on the spear, holding it up defensively.

But then Lambeard came up from the left with a swing for the fences, the upwards [Diagonal] connecting solidly with the monster's chest. It howled and turned to face the new threat, readying its battle axe for a [Horizontal].

I sidestepped out of its vision and went for a [Horizontal] at the back of its neck. This time the blow connected, and I felt a meaty sort of resistance as the tip of the spear sunk into flesh. Huh, so there was no bone analogue; that should have hit the spine.

The monster ignored me and launched its attack against Lambeard, who face-tanked it in exchange for securing the [Last Attack] with another [Diagonal].

We turned to see Nephren at half HP, surrounded by the last three cowmen - typical - and charged in to help. He'd apparently been holding his own, as two of mobs shattered into pixels with a single blow each.

With three of us against the last the low-level enemies, the rest of the fight was quick work. I'd noticed something weird about the aggro system in the game - the mobs kept shifting aggro whenever somebody got close enough, regardless of how much damage had been dealt by other players previously. It was like the aggro system was proximity based, instead of threat based. Weird, but it meant they spent more time spinning around trying to face their newest attacker than actually attacking, so I was cool with it.

"You know, this game is really weird," Nephren commented as he slung the mace over his shoulder.

"Yeah, there's no logout. I noticed," said Lambeard, rolling his eyes.

"No, from like a design point of view," said Nephren. "Like, Full Dive tech is suposed to be the ultimate in immersion, but there are all of these superficial video game elements that just break the suspension of disbelief."

"Such as?" I asked, still trying to get my breathing to settle. More from nerves than any actual physical exertion - the fight had been brief, and my Stamina bar was nearly full. I didn't really think the design logic of SAO mattered, but the hardcore nerd part of me couldn't resist the urge to poke holes in the logic of a Triple A gaming title.

Aside from the obvious one, which Lambeard had already covered.

"Well, all the pixels on monster death and the HUD and stuff. Like, what the shit, the whole point of putting me in the game is so that I don't need that crap. And you," he said, turning to me, "Keep trying to stab things in vital points, which is a good instinct, but it doesn't change the amount of damage you do here."

I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment. "Yeah, yeah. Aim small, miss small. I keep forgetting."

"And it's not just that," Nephren continued, more or less ignoring my answer. "They just don't have the blood splatter from hitting something with a blunt instrument, or the bones breaking - the enemies are still just wireframes. The game's too...clean. It's kind of creepy, really."

"Yes, _that's_ the creepy part of this whole thing," Lambeard snarked. "Not the part where you want to be covered in gore."

Nephren shrugged. "Hey, man. What's the point of making a Death Game with Teen-rated content?"

"You don't want _too_ much realism," I pointed out. "Imagine having to actually lug all this armor and shit around."

"You know, normally you could just mod all that stuff in if you wanted it. Run a private server on Hardcore Mode," Nephren answered, frowning. "Which is what I guess is actually happening, more or less. But anyway, instead of us getting to mod the game and run it however we want, we get no mods and half-assed design logic. This stuff is why console gaming is shit."

I actually laughed. The last complaint I'd expected was the PC Master Race stuff.

"You should file a report with a GM complaining about how hard it is to RP seriously," Lambeard said, struggling to keep a straight face.

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe file a bug report about the Log Out feature while you're at it."

Nephren nodded seriously. "Sure, sure, I'll just hop on the forums this evening."

We lapsed into a comfortable sort of silence while we sorted through the loot from the cowman camp.

"Well, anyway, that's the last cow horn I needed," I said, ending the moment. "We can start heading back now."

"Cool. I've got some sales I need to wrap up with some of the armorers in town," said Nephren.

Lambeard groaned theatrically. "Are you going to game the [Auction House] all day? Like you always do?"

Nephren shrugged. "Hey, just because you don't enjoy making extra money doesn't mean the rest of us can't do it."

I nodded along vaguely. SAO didn't, as far as I knew, have an Auction House, and Nephren hadn't struck me as the type to enjoy the merchant aspect of the game. But hey, to each their own.

"Hear me; I speak for the shades!" the NPC cried out.

I winced. "Of course I can hear you; you're like two feet away," I grumbled. Choices for the Unique Element Identification were limited, and dealing with this NPC made me regret that dearly. He was a short, wiry little man, with deeply tanned skin. His head was wrapped in black bandages that only revealed sharp teeth and bone-white eyes. The bandages extended haphazardly along his right arm, torso, and legs. Shards of bark, painted with runes I didn't recognize, were tucked into the bandages at random. In each hand he carried a wand, tipped with the withered hand of some small creature.

All in all, he was thoroughly creepy and far too loud.

"I brought you the items you needed to Identify my Element," I said, successfully prompting the dialogue box to turn in the quest items.

"Ah, very good!" He clapped his hands together, the wands clacking as they connected. Then he began to chant, "Au mosu atikanu…" as he extended his arms, the tips of the wands wavering. The room began to feel darker, as if cast in shadow. I turned and looked behind me, trying to see if the door to the shop had closed - but no, it simply looked as if the sun had given up on penetrating the oppressing atmosphere of the shaman's den.

When I looked back, the swarthy little man had transferred both wands to one hand, and the other was outstretched towards me. A small pile of polished knucklebones gleamed in the darkness.

Sighing, I reached out and took them. Wordlessly, the shaman pointed to the floor. I closed my eyes and flipped the switch in my mind, directing the burning sensation to pool in my hand. When the heat grew strong enough to make my fingers twitch against my will, I threw the bones on the floor.

"The bones are thrown!"

I'm not sure if I said it or he did.

The bones rattled as they hit the packed dirt floor, and it felt like they took much longer than they should to settle in place. The NPC traced over them with the wands, muttering to himself. Finally, he nodded. "I accept your guidance," he said, clearly speaking to the bones and not me.

He turned up, white eyes meeting mine. "The truth you have sought to find: your Element is Mind."

I scratched the tip of my nose. Curious. "What exactly does that mean? Like, am I better at influencing other people's minds, or mental effects, or is that supposed to mean non-material things in general?"

"I am the messenger of those gone by," he responded.

Then, nothing.

"Um...seriously, what does the Mind element cover?" I asked again.

"Hear me; I speak for the shades!" the shaman said again.

God dammit. Of course the NPC didn't have a dialogue path to explain anything about how Thaumaturgy would work for me; that would make the game easy, or logical, or - horror of horrors - possibly _fair_. I scowled and stalked out of the shaman's hut. Of course it couldn't be that easy.

[Guild] [1347] [Takehito] This sucks so much.

[Guild] [1347] [Takehito] We can't go out and quest because we'll die, but staying in the Safe Zone means doing the same mindless quests just to make enough Col to not starve.

[Guild] [1348] [Yamato] You know the rest of the Players hate us, too. Just because we're not playing along with that madman's "Clear the Game" shit, they think we're lazy.

[Guild] [1348] [Ryusei] It's the worst from the [Paladins]. Bunch of uptight, arrogant assholes.

[Guild] [1348] [Sakura] Well, at least they cleared the first Boss and moved on to the Second Floor. I haven't seen any of them today.

[Guild] [1349] [Ryusei] Typical. Abandoning the rest of us to twiddle our thumbs on the First Floor until Kayaba ends the charade.

Hadn't he been bitching about how much he hated the [Paladins] _thirty seconds ago_? The hypocrisy was painful. I rolled my eyes at my guildchat. '_Fuck this,'_ I thought.

/GuildQuit

A confirmation box appeared, asking if I was sure. I tapped [Yes] three times before it went away.

The [ALF] tag underneath my name vanished, and I sighed in relief. I'd heard of the Guild a week ago through Takehito, who frequented Mika's tavern, where I was currently enjoying some sort of Cherry Coke/Baja Blast fusion in solitude. Takehito had pitched it as a Guild oriented around shoring up the rear line; a community of players who helped each other out without going outside the Safe Zones. Going outside the Safe Zones was pretty much exactly what I wanted to avoid at the moment, so it had sounded straight up my alley.

I should have known better than to hook up with a newbie guild pitched to me buy a random asshole on the street. That shit never worked.

The Guild "helping each other out" had mostly consisted of bitching and moaning. The ALF did offer enough of a basic welfare stipend to survive on the First Floor, but the constant chat spam had been _very_ annoying. The only good thing to come out of my week in the ALF was a (probably heavily skewed) understanding of the movers and shakers of SAO.

The most famous was [The Sixth Ranger]. I didn't know his real name, but he sounded more like a campside legend than a Player Character. He spent an entire month racing around the First Floor, saving hundreds of players from monsters they couldn't fight, and then beat the Floor Boss "single handedly" by some of the rumors. I highly doubted that - there had been an entire raid for the first Boss - but still, that particular story was persistent. Of course, his critics said he was a glory hogging kill stealer, and that sounded more like your typical MMO player to me.

Then there was Diabel, who'd organized the raid to kill the Floor Boss. He'd probably end up leading a guild if the functionality was ever patched in. In a more normal setting, I probably would have joined it - heaven knows I had the experience. You don't play WoW for eighty hours a week for four years without learning _exactly_ how raiding guild culture worked. Diabel was even a [Rune User], like me. And as the most visible organizer of players trying to [Clear the Game], he naturally drew the ire of almost everyone who wasn't attempting the same. Personally, I thought it made sense to at least play along with Kayaba's delusions of grandeur.

Aside from those two, no one stood at the level of "true celebrity." I'd heard of Von Ilya, who was rumored to be [The Sixth Ranger]'s sister and a Front Liner, but not anything else. Of particular interest to me was a player who went by LHMC. He'd discovered the [Cure] spell, and shared the spell with the rest of the player base for free. He'd been more or less in charge of organizing the dedicated healers for the first raid.

The [Cure] spell worked for me about as well as my real-life medical abilities did, which was to say poorly. Medical _administration_, not medical.

Finally there was Argo, the best source for information in the game. She'd have been completely irrelevant normally - but without a Wiki, I hadn't hesitated to pony up for a copy of Argo's Guide once I had the money. There was a hefty discount on purchasing updated copies, but mine was barely a day old.

And a good thing I hadn't bought an earlier edition, because there had been a [Content Patch] after the First Boss. The in-game description had been laughably useless, but for now Argo's Guide had the only thing I needed to know.

_With the most recent patch, Spell Research has been incorporated as a mechanic. Players are able to design their own spells, and upon successful completion receive a substantial [Experience] reward. It is unclear whether Cardinal is creating new spells based on player ideas or whether players are "discovering" spells already programmed into the system. Calculations into quantifying the [Experience] reward for Spell Research are ongoing. There is a 100 Col reward for more information on this aspect of gameplay._

I leaned back into my chair and took another sip of my not-soda. Mika's tavern was a relaxing environment, not heavily traveled by players. I'd decided I didn't really like the mix of European rustic wood and traditional Japanese paper screens, but they did a good job of making the place feel more private. It was as good a place as any to think this through. I dismissed [Argo's Guide] with a wave of my hand.

So, custom spell generation. If it was anything like the rest of Thaumaturgy, then it was an entirely mental exercise and not a game of "move the sliders to adjust how hard the Fireball hits" like in Elder Scrolls. Brunhilda had said the Three Basic Magecraft were [Reinforcement], [Alteration], and [Projection]. Currently, only [Reinforcement] was available in the game.

So that left me with...what? My Elements were Ether and Mind, so...mental reinforcement? Yeah, right, the game could actually make you smarter. I'd believe that around the time Kayaba picked up a sword and started leading the Front Liners in person. Maybe it could do something along the lines of HUD improvements - years of mods had spoiled me, and this stock-standard interface was woefully disappointing.

As far as the other Element, I _still_ didn't understand what the hell Ether really was. I'd tentatively guessed that it was somewhere in the "Force" category of spells while also encompassing "pure magic" effects like Magic Missile. I didn't think the Thaumaturgy system currently supported Magic Missile, but if it did, Ether would be the element for it.

Back to Mind. Reinforcement was, in game terms, the ability to increase a quality of an item. The triple-stacked Tyrrunar reinforced the efficacy of weapons by increasing the relevant stats, i.e. durability, sharpness, and damage. What were the stats of the mind? The real stats, not the Descartes bullshit from my foray into undergraduate philosophy.

Well. Point of fact - the mind was the brain. The brain did other things that didn't really fall under the category of "Mind" but that was getting into rhetorical details.

I doubted the Cardinal system was complex enough for me to do something like, "Reinforce the sensitivity of insulin receptors." That was too technical; the in-game character models were just wireframes without any substance to them. So I probably couldn't affect an internal body process - the bodies in SAO didn't have internal processes.

Maybe something more abstract?

What about…reinforcing an emotion? The game could clearly simulate dopamine release; my experience with the in-game alcohol was more than enough confirmation of that.

And wasn't that creepy, now that I thought about it? The NervGear could basically control your brain. It was most obvious during the Thaumaturgy System Assist, but it also had to happen during other parts of gameplay…

Mmm. Terrifying implications.

Aaaand, just like the other thousand terrifying thoughts I'd had about the nature of SAO, there was nothing I could do about it. Away the thought went, to the corner where I buried things I didn't like thinking about. I was good at that.

Right, back to using Thaumaturgy to create artificial happiness. Because really, Magical Heroin was really what this game needed to be _less_ fucked up.

But now it was just an interesting logic puzzle for me. I knew seven runes - Victory, Clarity, Creation, Passage, Health, Communication, and Mind. Brunhilda had described them differently, but those were the [Concepts] that I had mentally appended to each of them. It was far from a perfect way of thinking about the Runes, but it was a generally accurate way of predicting what effects they would have.

I had a relatively small sample size (three Runic spells) to test my theories, but they held up so far.

[Runic Reinforcement - Physical] took three Victory runes. The placement of the runes varied based on what, exactly, was being Reinforced. In theory you could Reinforce a person, but that was useless unless you did it in yourself. SAO's Thaumaturgy was apparently one of those "edgy" homebrews that didn't differentiate between [Beneficial] and [Harmful] effects, so a player's innate [Magic Resistance] would quickly erode any outside buff (or debuff) placed on them the moment they activated their Circuit.

[Runic Translation] was simply a Mind and Communication rune below each ear. I'd found that I could passively understand what others were saying without the Mind rune, but couldn't speak Japanese any better than normal.

Finally, [Runic Regeneration]. That spell was interesting, but also completely inferior to [Cure]. One placed a Health rune on the wound and another on any living object - player, NPC, tree, whatever. The fluff said that the wound was being transferred to the other living object, but that didn't actually happen. Probably some sort of game balance stuff, so you didn't put the other rune on an enemy and have it kill itself.

Obviously I would need Mind for the spell. I could try triple-stacking it like Victory. Mmm. That seemed like the simplest course.

I opened my inventory and scrolled down to the appropriate Runes, then materialized them in my hand. For something like physical reinforcement, which I'd done a hundred times, I could just draw the runes in the air. But for something new, the physical runes helped. I wasn't sure if it was a placebo effect or if it aided the System Assist or what, but it definitely made things easier.

Eventually I settled for putting two on my shoulders and one on top of my head. I closed my eyes, trying to stay very, very still. It wouldn't do to have the damn things fall off in the middle of the spell. And thank God that Mika wasn't smart enough to ask questions about eccentric player behavior.

With a practiced effort, I flipped a switch in my mind. A familiar warmth blossomed in my chest, and I directed the energy into the runes surrounding my head.

The pain was immediate and all-consuming.

Every muscle in my digital body locked up before I could open my mouth to scream in agony.

I tried to close the Circuit, mentally flailing for the cutoff switch. The image blurred, flashed red from the mind-altering pain that felt like it would split my head open any moment. I felt my teeth grind against each other, hard enough that something would have broken in the real world.

Magecraft beyond your ability was punished heavily.

I flipped the switch again, cutting off the flow of energy to the runes. The heat in my chest faded.

The pain in my head grew four-fold. If Cardinal were capable of replicating shock, I would have already blacked out.

I could feel the energy in my head, drifting chaotically through my skull and trailing agony with it. I needed to get rid of it, but the runes bound the prana to my mind. I needed something to do with it, to think of_something_ to Reinforce, before it settled into one place in my brain.

Reinforcing something beyond its capacity would destroy it.

I tried to think of something, anything through the pain. Just anything but the pain, I needed every part of my brain _except for the pain!_

The prana immediately settled into a diffuse blanket enveloping my head. I felt it seep into me, felt the pain vanish into the background while ten million other things rushed to the forefront of my consciousness.

I saw my first grade playground. Watched my first fight through my own eyes in Infinite-P HD, every bit of playground mulch crystal clear. I was ambushing a bully, Chris, from behind as he came out of the jungle gym. Slammed his head into the ground, watched blood burst from his nose. Did it again, then walked away before he'd recovered enough to try and figure out who did it.

I could feel the exact increase in temperature as my drink slowly approached room temperature, despite it being two feet away inside a ceramic mug. I was distracted from the thought by my own supreme awareness of the awkward placement of my tongue in my mouth, the exact feel of air as it passed through my nostrils while I manually inhaled and exhaled.

Outside the tavern, I could identify the number of PC passerby based solely on the sounds of their footsteps in relation to the tone of their conversation. Could tell that the heavily armored one was nervous, and that his companion was not, even as my translation spell fizzled out of existence.

At the very edge of my hearing was the erratic, rapid _beep_..._beep/i]...[i]beep_ of a heart rate monitor. Someone was having a heart attack.

I became aware of a thousand things at once, all clamoring for my attention. I lost myself in the white noise of my own senses, unable to filter ten million billion nerves that all had something important to tell me.

I couldn't tell if a second or a day passed when the excess prana in my head finally burned off.

My muscles unlocked, and my eyes opened. My HUD was cluttered with dozens of different warning and congratulations boxes. I looked around unsteadily, my eyes stuttering as I tried to make sense of the notifications.

Then they rolled back up in my head and I collapsed to the floor.

Hello darkness, my old friend -


End file.
